~ our blog about moving east & moving on

Tag Archives: kitchen

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve updated around here. Between preparing for Thanksgiving away and a busy work holiday season … and hosting out of town guests … keeping this updated has fallen behind.

We’ve made lots of fun updates in the past few weeks. Ready for a kitchen update?

Here’s what we it looked like when we purchased it:

The first order of business was to open up the wall into the dining room:

Planning on taking cabinet space from the wall for the dishwasher, we needed some more storage in the room. We decided on assembling an island in the center of the room. We used a few cabinets from Ikea as the inner shell, and built custom shelving behind.

Next, we worked on new oak countertops and appliances.

With the sink, faucet & dishwasher in, it was time for a fresh coat of paint.

Jed installed new island lighting over the finished product – our island with soapstone countertops and barn beam supports. We also decided to paint the ceiling boards white for contrast.

Since that photo in last summer, the kitchen progress more or less grinded to a standstill. We added some art here and there, but the glaring sore spot in the room was the floors.

They hadn’t been sanded or stained in years, and it was high time for a refresh.

As we did with the dining room, we rented a sander from Home Depot — this one wasn’t a belt sander (which we thought would be too aggressive on our old pine floors), and instead opted for a walk-behind random orbital sander. We had to hand-sand many of the dips and edges the larger sander couldn’t reach.

We decided to paint the ceilings white. And let me tell you — the next time you think about setting aside a few weekend hours to prime rough-hewn timbers, double the time you think it’ll take. And then triple it. Ugh.